Peter says:
What is an Uncle Tom (from the American novel of slave life, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin)?
'The phrase "Uncle Tom" [is] an epithet for a person who is slavish and excessively subservient to perceived authority figures, particularly a black person who behaves in a subservient manner to white people; or any person perceived to be a participant in the oppression of their own group'. (Wikipedia)
Now who is Owen Tudor?
'I’ve been the Head of the TUC’s European Union and International Relations Department since 2003 and have worked at the TUC since 1984. I’ve been a member of the Health and Safety Commission, the Civil Justice Council, the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council and now I’m on the Wilton Park Advisory Council. I’m particularly interested in the trade union movements of Australia, Iran and Iraq, the Middle East and the USA, and I’m interested in migration, trade, and building trade union capacity. I’m the Secretary of TUC Aid, the TUC’s charitable union development arm and on the Robin Hood Tax campaign steering committee'.
Why the f**k is the TUC - and the ITUC - still lobbying rather than Occupying the World Bank?
Uncle Owen and his ilk are still hoping, praying and lobbying for the international financial institutions to surpass their neo-liberal error and return to the path of the Post-World War Two compromise between Labour on the one hand, Capital and State on the other. Known as Keynesianism, iconised by the Welfare State, this has to now be seen as a phase in capitalist development made necessary by both the shock to the system delivered by that war, and by the collaboration of labour with the liberal capitalist states against the fascist ones. That this epoch also saw collaboration with fascism in Spain and Greece, colonial repression and wars, and, of course, the continued growth of capitalism that lay the base for neo-liberalism, are features ignored by the Uncle Toms of the inter/national trade union movement. This period of 'social partnership' (subordinate collaboration of labour with Capital and State), is suggested here by Tudor's membership of the Wilton Park Advisory Council. So the best that the I/TUC can lobby out of the World Banksters is a return to Keynesianism, now possibly a Global Neo-Keynesianism - a gentler, kinder global capitalism - which does not question its fundamental structure and nature, indeed which cannot even imagine anything beyond this world-destroying historical epoch.
Meanwhile, in the workplaces, out on the streets, on the web, in the real world of Spain, South Africa, Indonesia, Egypt, movements like Occupy, Real Democracy, the Indignants, are raising fundamental questions about the nature of capitalism by 1) refusing to play its liberal-democratic or social-partnership games and 2) winning the battle for ideas that the I/TUC has long abandoned.
As for whether there is anything more to Tudor's piece than the wish that is father to the thought, I leave to those political-economists who are rather more independent of social-partnership institutions, understandings and aspirations than he is.
Now read on...
A public policy blog from the TUC
Owen TudorThis month’s annual meetings of the World Bank and the IMF in Tokyo will see renewed lobbying by global unions for decent work and against austerity. So the publication on Monday night of the World Bank’s flagship annual publication, the 2012 World Development Review, was a major event – and one that the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) was able, for once, to welcome.
Entitled simply “Jobs“, it marks a significant shift away from the old Washington consensus that said growth was good regardless of who benefitted, and that workers’ protections were bad for growth. There’s still a distinctly anti-public sector bias, and the ITUC is worried that the Bank’s new concept, ‘good jobs for development’, consciously sidesteps the work of the ILO on ‘decent work’ (although others disagree). But there is much to welcome, not least new World Bank Director Jim Kim’s introductory remark that:
“The problem for most poor people in (developing) countries is not the lack of a job or too few hours of work; many hold more than one job and work long hours. Yet, too often, they are not earning enough to secure a better future for themselves and their children, and at times they are working in unsafe conditions and without the protection of their basic rights.”
The report stresses that growth needs to provide good jobs at decent wages; that labour market regulation (except at the extremes) does not prevent job creation (as unions have long argued was borne out by the available evidence); and that compliance with the ILO’s core labour standards is needed. If those policies determined what the World Bank actually does, it would be a major step forward (although both the IMF and World Bank have a track record of good policy and bad practice.)
For a start, the World Bank would need to consign the ‘employing workers indicator’ of its best-selling guide (Doing Business) to the dustbin of history. That indicator means that countries which flout the core labour standards and other worker protections such as minimum wages and health and safety score highly in the Doing Business rankings. And Bank officials in developing and emerging countries often advise governments to act accordingly. Belarus scored quite high on the rankings, ‘despite’ being a dictatorship with an appalling record of worker and human rights abuses. That sort of example did at least get the ‘employing workers indicator’ suspended and it is now the subject of a review – but the 2012 WDR surely now suggests that the indicator be laid to rest permanently.
Opinion is divided on how positive the WDR 2012 is, with the ITUC being more cautious than others. But it is clearly a step forward, and the TUC will be urging International Development Secretary Justine Greening to take its lessons on board when she travels to Tokyo, just as we have urged George Osborne to learn the lesson of the labour market across the developed world that austerity isn’t working.
You need to be a member of UnionBook to add comments!
Join UnionBook